THE LATE INDIAN WAR AND CHRISTIANITY.
REV. MYRON EELLS, S’KOKOMISH, WASHINGTON TERRITORY.
We have had another Indian war, and, as usual, there has been a cry in favor of turning the Indians over to the War Department. There are some, however, of us who will persist in seeing something favorable to Christianity and the present policy even in this war, and we think we have our reasons for it.
I do not propose, at present, to thoroughly discuss the causes of the war, for I am not well enough acquainted with them to do so intelligently. Some will lay the blame on Government, some on a Christian policy, and some on the Indians. Perhaps all may have to bear a part. Although I believe that the Government has often treated the Indians wrongfully, yet a long course of observation has convinced me that the Indians are not all saints, and when the Government is often crooked, either intentionally or unintentionally, and two crooked sticks come together, there is almost always sure to be trouble.
The published statements of General Crook, who is not supposed to be very sentimental in his feelings toward the Indians, and who was at the Fort Hall Agency at the beginning of the war, implicates the Government severely.
A residence of nearly three years in Idaho, 1871–1874, in the very region of the war, led me to believe that very little was energetically done for Christianizing those Indians. This has been true at some Agencies. Their annual reports show that while the Government opened wide the doors for Christian work, when the present policy was adopted, and said, “We will give you opportunity, encouragement and aid, if you will only send the Indians missionaries,” yet that Christians have failed to take hold of the work as they ought to have done. If this was true of the Indians engaged in the late war, Christians may have to bear a part of the blame.
Notwithstanding all this, some laurels have been added by the late war to the Christian work which has been done among the Indians. One “who wishes to be understood” has written a letter in which he speaks very harshly against the Christian workers on the Yakama Reservation, where Father Wilbur, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, has been successfully laboring for sixteen years. He says: “The present reservation system is a failure in every respect. We, who daily come in contact with the Indians, cannot be made to believe that prayer-books, praying generals, and Methodist preachers, (or any other preachers,) are a good safeguard against the tomahawk and the scalping-knife; and the pseudo-philanthropists, the Christian-mongers of the East, who are paying thousands to send missionaries among these barbarians, would do us a favor if they would keep them away; and if the U. S. Government would be less influenced in its conduct toward the Indians by the advocates of Christianity, our wives and children might be annually spared the sight of murdered husbands and fathers. So far we have been loyal, while Indians, with passes from Wilbur and other Agents, have been on the war-path. We have reliable information that some of the dead Indians found after the battles near Pendleton had on their persons passes from Wilbur.”
Now it is probably a fact that some of the Umatilla Indians, and perhaps a few of the Yakamas, were engaged in aiding the enemy. There are always some renegade Indians connected with each tribe, as well as white renegades and tramps. As tribes, however, they did not engage in the war, and comparatively few individuals did.
In the Indian war of 1855–6, before Father Wilbur went among these same Yakamas, they were the leading spirits, and it was the most wide-spread war which has ever devastated this coast. If they and the Umatillas had joined in this war, it would have been far more terrible than it has been. Inducements were not wanting to lead them into it. It is said on good authority that two thousand horses were offered them by the hostiles if they would join them, and yet they refused. An army officer in command of one of the battles said that some of those Indians did nobly in aiding our soldiers to gain the victory.
It may be said that they had too much permanent property in homes and farms, to allow them to engage in the war; for they knew that if they should do so, they would certainly in the end lose it all. This is undoubtedly so; and yet when Father Wilbur went among them they had none of this kind of property, but only movable property which they could carry with them even in war, as the Bannocks have done. It is a fact that Christianity gave them this property.
It may again be said that they were thoroughly whipped in 1855–6 and were afraid to engage in war again. They were thus whipped, and the remembrance of it may, even now, do them good. But in 1862–3 Gen. Crook, the noted Indian fighter, just as thoroughly thrashed the Indians in Idaho, in precisely the same region where the late war was carried on, and the praise of his effectual work is still in the mouths of the old citizens. This was seven years later than the Yakama war, and so much fresher in the minds of the Indians. No, it was evidently Christianity which prevented their joining in the war.
Gen. Howard, too, has added new laurels to his reputation. It must be remembered that he is the principal one of our generals who has not been in favor of the transfer of the Indians to the War Department. This praying general has prosecuted the war with such vigor that the strong papers with strong arguments have sustained him, and almost invariably those who went with him in his rough marches have defended him, such as newspaper correspondents, scouts and the like, and the “stay at homes” have been about the only ones who have found fault. His recent conference with the Umatilla Indians since the war has shown such firmness, justice and Christianity as to win for him very many friends among those who previously opposed him, thus showing again that Christianity is the way of dealing with the Indians. So Christianity has won its laurels even in this war.